By Paul Punturieri. "A local blog with news, events and things that matter to all citizens of Moultonboro"

"Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

Alexander Hamilton

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

"Irrational Panic"

Every once in a while I get off our local topics and find something that has little or nothing to do with local politic or goings on. This is one of them.It would appear that billionaire Donald Trump doesn't think that American humanitarian workers that contracted the ebola virus in Africa should be brought back to the USA. His recent Twitter tweet stated"Ebola patient will be brought to the U.S. in a few days -- Now I know for sure that our leaders are incompetent. KEEP THEM OUT OF HERE!" No doubt we can find many examples of incompetent leadership in Washington, but this isn't one of them. He went on to defend his tweet on Monday's Fox and Friends by saying this about the infected Americans “They are great people. They're tremendous people. But they have to suffer the consequences.They go and they try and help other people, but things like this happen.Our country has enough problems. Send the doctors to Liberia. Send the doctors to West Africa to take care of our people. It's one thing. But don't let them in" A little research and he would have found that the isolation facility in Atlanta at Emory University Hospital was set up about a dozen years ago for just this type of patient. Thankfully, it has not been needed before, but now there is a tremendous opportunity to learn a great deal about the virus, how to treat this terrible disease and how to contain it. Not to mention taking care of our own. The medical team has taken every precaution to protect themselves and the public from contamination. These people that travel the world to deliver care in the harshest, dangerous and violent environments are heroes and should be treated as such. Trump's callousness is palpable. Saying that they must suffer the consequences and essentially to stay the hell out of America is irrational, uniformed and just plain stupid. I began my medical career in a hospital in lower Manhattan at the onset of an epidemic that we now know as AIDS. It had no name then, but was spreading rapidly and we really had no clue how it was transmitted or how to contain it. We did the best we could even as most of those infected passed away ,some caregivers contracted the illness and many were ostracized and shunned. Now days, it is common for people that are HIV positive to live fairly normal lives and not suffer the same social stigma of just 30 years ago. That happened because of knowledge. The unknown can be very scary and that is just what is happening with ebola. Trump's comments do nothing to prevent the spread or treatment of this or any other communicable disease. "Doctor" Trump in his irrational concern for these few infected individuals causing an epidemic here in the USA is only "trumped" by his stupidity that can cause an epidemic of irrational panic. Stick to real estate Donald.